Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper
| Andreas Schimper | |
|---|---|
Andreas Schimper
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| Born | 12 May 1856 Strasbourg, France |
| Died |
9 September 1901 (aged 45) Basel |
| Nationality | Germany |
| Fields | botanist |
| Alma mater | University of Strassburg |
Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (12 May 1856 – 9 September 1901) was a German botanist and phytogeographer who made major contributions in the fields of histology, ecology and plant geography. He travelled to South East Asia and the Carribean as part of the 1899 deep-sea expedition. His health had been seriously affected by malaria and he died of complications at the age of only 45 years in 1901. He coined the terms tropical rainforest and sclerophyll and is commemorated in numerous specific names.
Schimper was born in Strasbourg, France, into a family of eminent 19th century scientists. His father Wilhelm Philippe Schimper (1808-1880) was Director of the Natural History Museum in Strassburg, Professor of Geology, and a leading bryologist. His father's cousin was Georg Wilhelm Schimper (1804-1878), prominent collector and explorer in Arabia and North Africa and the naturalist Karl Friedrich Schimper.
Schimper studied at the University of Strassburg from 1874 to 1878, acquiring a Ph.D. Thereafter he worked in Lyon and travelled to the United States, staying in Baltimore and Massachusetts. In 1883 Schimper postulated the endosymbiotic origin of chloroplasts and paved the way to the Endosymbiont theory of Konstantin Mereschkowski und Lynn Margulis. In 1886 he was appointed Extraordinary Professor at the University of Bonn, where he worked largely on cell histology, chromatophores and starch metabolism. He had become interested in phytogeography and plant ecology, undertaking expeditions to the West Indies and Venezuela in 1882-1883, in 1886 he stayed with Fritz Müller in Brazil and in 1889-1890 in Ceylon, Malaya and Botanical Garden in Buitenzorg (Bogor/Java), concentrating on mangroves, epiphytes and littoral vegetation. This resulted in his account of the Rhizophoraceae in Engler & Prantl's Natürliche Pflanzenfamilien.
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